Advocating a Virtuous Voluntaryism

The Problem With Joe McCarthy, Dispelling Other Accepted Narratives

It was not too long ago we had someone in town for a conference where one of his featured roles was to heap laud upon Conservative Hero Joe McCarthy. Ever since Obama and his Marxist rhetoric (but not so much deeds) have been front and center on the national stage, Conservatives have found it stylish to immerse themselves in the history and propaganda of all things anti-Communist. And while there is a time and a place for this, I find it incredibly unhealthy for the Conservative movement at large, because it leads them to focus on words more than deeds. If someone uses the language of a wealth-envier, class warrior, what have you, he is automatically labeled a Stalinist, whether he is or not. But those that are more subtle in their wealth-distributing ways, and who may even have a few nefarious deeds under their belt, are just as quickly given a pass. Especially if they happen to have an R next to their name. But remember, the greatest danger to a nation or a movement is always from within. So, I will attempt to set the record straight on Joe and go off on several related tangents, including ones dealing with two August 15 Anniversaries: The unofficial Surrender of Japan which ended World War Two, and Nixon’s termination of the Bretton Woods System which put the last nail in the coffin of the gold standard.

Joseph R. McCarthy was largely responsible for the influx of East Coast (and very progressive) Jews (both religious and agnostic) and Catholics (both devout and nominal) into the Republican Party, which (because of the Neoconservatives this influx brought with it) ultimately has spelled its (still ongoing) demise (which, in my opinion, culminated in the year 2001, when George W. Bush reneged on his promises to pursue a humble foreign policy and end the Department of Education. I guess he learned that from his father: No New Taxes!). What I mean by this is that the Protestant Ethic that had come to be central to both major parties was replaced with either a virulent strain of secular totalitarianism (mainly Marxist) or religious totalitarianism. This is not to disparage either Catholics or Jews. Nor is it to let Protestants off the hook. And neither is it to diminish or downplay the other ideological inroads made into the two major parties over the decades that have also in some way contributed to their destruction.

Joe’s legacy, though not his intent, was to destroy his own party by building a coalition of Middle American Protestant Conservatives with East Coast Totalitarian Progressives, thus watering down the once Conservative GOP. Both of these groups, despite having little in common in terms of heritage, politics, or demeanor, opposed Stalin’s Soviet Communism (which bore more resemblance to Nazi Germany than it did the idealized Communist state). It is important to note that some key persons in the eastern part of the coalition were in fact Communists and Socialists themselves, though of a different strain than the Soviets. They were more intellectually aligned with Trotsky, Luxemburg, De Leon, and others than they were with Stalin, whom they viewed as an impure Marxist.

Joe was right about the influence of Stalinists in the State Department, but his jingoism played right into their hands. In the end Joe was betrayed by President Eisenhower (1951-1959). Vice-President Richard Nixon sided with Joe, which some see as a source of vindication. But during his presidency (1969-1974), on the 26th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, he enacted widespread wage and price controls for the first time since the Great Depression. On the same day he ended the Bretton Woods System. The Bretton Woods System was created in 1944 by the Allied Nations, and was the last vestige of the Gold Standard. The average lifespan of a fiat currency is 27 years (see this, this, this, and this). Bretton Woods lasted exactly that. The post-BWS Dollar turns 41 next month. It is well past its date with destiny.

The one decent president (policy-wise) we have had between Coolidge (1923-1929, who said, “the chief business of the American people is business.”) and Reagan (1981-1989, who was fond of quoting Coolidge), Kennedy (1961-1963), actually committed voter fraud during the 1960 election, most notably in Illinois (with his father’s help) and Texas (with help from Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-1969). It is generally acknowledged, though very quietly, that Nixon would have won in 1960 if not for this. Some have speculated that the Watergate Scandal, which was little more than a non-newsworthy political prank was his latent and vengeful response to the stolen election. Note that Kennedy, Nixon, and McCarthy all served in the US House together, and were very close friends. Kennedy’s father was one of McCarthy’s biggest supporters. He was also named Joseph and was also an Irish Catholic. Joe Kennedy, though a Democrat who had initially supported Roosevelt, later opposed him and some of his policies, including in regards to entry into World War Two in the Atlantic theater.

The Communists in the state department, along with “conservative” icon Winston Churchill (whose hero Lord Kitchener essentially invented the concentration camp and rivaled Union General Sherman for his inhumanity to soldiers and civilians alike) and “liberal” icon Roosevelt (1933-1945) were also responsible for giving Eastern Europe to Stalin. WWII was started to liberate Poland and Czechoslovakia from the Nazis. Both of these nations were given to Stalin in exchange for his help in the war effort against Japan. Roosevelt died before both the German surrender and the Japanese surrender. Truman (1945-1951) oversaw both victories.

George S. Patton was one general who knew not to trust the Soviets. He wanted to get to Berlin before them because he knew they would wreak havoc and attempt to occupy Germany indefinitely. It was possible for the Americans to get there first but the British (who hated Patton because he knew better than to get along rust a smarmy pederast redcoats like Lord Bernard Montgomery) and their lackey General Eisenhower prevented this. The Red Army reached Berlin first, and as a result Germany was divided between the West and the Soviets. The Western portion flourished in the post war era. The Eastern portion was in a similar situation that North Korea is in today. Today, as a result of the Western portion’s economic liberty (which was fostered, in part, by German Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard), Germany is Europe’s economic powerhouse. It is likely all that is keeping the European Central Bank and the Euro afloat. It also stands to gain no matter what happens. What Charlemagne, Napoleon, Otto, Bill, and Adolf could not accomplish and sustain with brute force, Angela will, simply by being at the helm of so great a productive engine.

General Patton also wanted to push the Soviets out of Eastern Europe. But since Eastern Europe was sold down the river at the Yalta Accords by Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Communists in the State Department (some of the ones Joseph McCarthy later warned about), there would be none of this. He died as the result of a “car accident” while being driven through the German countryside in December 1945. There is a substantial, though still dubious case to be made that he was in fact assassinated by the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) to either silence him or prevent him from getting his way.

Truman’s Atomic bomb, sickly dubbed Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6. On August 7, the Japanese were considering surrender, a conditional one, but surrender nonetheless. On August 8, the Soviets broke the Neutrality Pact and invaded Japan. This caused a reaction within the higher echelons of Japan’s war ministry. The desire now was to NOT surrender but instead declare martial law and repel the invasion. There was now the “need” to drop another nuclear weapon, named Fat Man, this time on Nagasaki. Such was done on August 9. On August 15, in a radio address, Emperor Hirohito announced surrender, this time unconditional. The official surrender was on September 2. The United States has troops there to this day.

Because the Soviets and the Chinese had become involved, they were allowed to take part in the occupation. The Soviets were given North Korea, which is why it is a communist hellhole to this day. The Chinese were given Taiwan, which is today a breakaway republic and a major point of contention between the US and China.

And why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor in the first place? Because they wanted to conquer Hawaii? Nope. Japan had invaded China TEN years before. But because Britain had its eye on China for its own reasons, America cut off Japan’s oil supply. The nation was also economically and diplomatically isolated by the League of Nations (created by Woodrow Wilson and reconvened as the UN by Roosevelt and Truman). The Japanese attempted to placate the British and American’s all throughout the 1930s, including by appointing Pro-Anglo ministers and seeking out diplomatic alternatives to sanctions. These gifts were rejected out of hand. The Roosevelt administration deliberately antagonized the Japanese so as to keep the from becoming involved with the Russians. Roosevelt did not want his buddies Stalin and Churchill to have to fight the Germans and the Japanese. The result was Pearl Harbor, which some have contended was known about days in advance and preventable even up to just minutes before the attack. Such was ignored by the administration and the Naval bureaucracy because entry into the European conflict on the side of Britain and the USSR (something Roosevelt had explicitly promised to not do) was apparently the ultimate goal.

Hitler’s rise to power was a direct result of the World War One Allies chopping Germany into little pieces (resulting in the invasion of France to reclaim German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine, the invasion of Czechoslovakia to reclaim German-speaking Sudetenland, and the invasion of Poland to reclaim German-speaking Silesia and Prussia) and the steep reparations that caused Germany defaulted on, which led to hyperinflation. Hitler did not let the crises go to waste. And the story of how the US got involved in World War One and with the British Empire, and its foreign policy aftermath is just as reprehensible as the story of our involvement in World War Two and with the Soviet Empire.

I saved the best for last. The Federal Reserve System was created in 1910 at a secret meeting of some of America’s most elite bankers. It was “justified” by the [government-induced] Banking Panic of 1907. The Federal Reserve Act, and its older sibling, the Sixteenth Amendment (the increase in revenue from the Income Tax actually made tariffs, which had been the norm since 1861, when the excuse for them was the Banking Panic of 1857, obsolete as a source of revenue) were enacted by Congress (and in the case of the 16th, three fourths of the states) in 1913, one year before the onset of World War One and four years before the United States’ unnecessary entry into that conflict. And after that Great War, and the heroin-like addiction to Central Banking that ensued, there was no turning back. The Federal Reserve System’s and Department of the Treasury’s role in financing and lending to heavily indebted England after World War One was the cause of the Depression of 1920-1921 AND the Great Depression of 1929-1945. Warren Harding (1921-1923, and a corrupt politician to be sure) let human action and the Free Market allocate resources to their proper places, and the Depression lasted less than a year.

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and Franklin Roosevelt, on the other hand, did everything in the book to prolong the Depression that began in 1929. Wage and price controls. Bailouts. Stimulus. Tax increases. Public works projects. Seizure of the population’s gold. Fixing the price of gold. Beginning the end of the gold standard. Welfare. Subsidies. War. The Depression ended in large part due to World War Two ending. Keynesian economists tend to claim that the Depression ended because the War spending primed the pump and revived consumer confidence, acting as a sort of stimulus program and that the draft cured unemployment. On the second count, there is truth, but a very priggish truth. Of course SLAVERY (involuntary servitude, which violates the Thirteenth Amendment) cures unemployment! Should everyone out of work be enslaved? And on the first count nothing could be further from the truth. In reality the Depression subsided because men were coming back from Europe and the Pacific and adding to the nation’s productive capacity and Harry Truman cut “defense” spending by 75 percent. It is very ironic that one of the presidents that neoconservative warmongers worship and adulate (often in disgusting and servile fashion) the most (mainly because he has the blood of 200,000 unsuspecting Japanese civilians on his hands) actually CUT “the military”! Why don’t they emulate their hero? Wait! I know what you are thinking: A neocon wanting to cut a nickel from the Military-Industrial Complex’s profligacy and plunder about which we were warned by none other than their other [ironic] demigod, Dwight Eisenhower?! And I agree: You would have better luck finding a jihadi attending a church potluck humbly asking for another helping of roast pork.